21 Eerie Experiences People Have Had With Narrowly Avoiding A Dangerous Situation That Prove You Should Always Trust Your Gut
I'm someone who always loves reading an unexplained mystery or creepy story, but there's something especially chilling about the moments people "have a feeling" that something will go wrong. Maybe it's a voice they hear, or perhaps it's just a gut feeling; either way, it's terrifying when they're proven right. Recently, redditor u/TheRealGreedyGoat asked the r/AskReddit community to share their scary "trust your gut" moments. Here are their stories.
1."Not me, my grandfather. He used to never wear his seatbelt. One day, he was driving around with my mom and suddenly remarked, 'I feel like I'm about to go through the windshield,' and buckled in. Less than 30 seconds later, as they were going through an intersection, a car blew the red light going like 40 mph and slammed into my grandpa's side of the car. He walked away with nothing worse than some fractured ribs, and now he always wears his seatbelt."
2."I had to leave for an appointment, and for some reason, I felt the urge to just sit in my car before leaving. I sat there, just looking around for two minutes or so. Then the feeling went away, and I left. When I was on the highway, I saw a crash happened just minutes before I was supposed to be there. The truck blew a tire and hit other cars, which also hit other cars. It was a mess. Two people died. A few others were heavily injured in the hospital. I was in the traffic behind the scene for about two hours and was so glad I had sat in my car just staring around before leaving. I still do that sometimes, thinking back to that moment."
3."When I was a teen, I'd make a few bucks by helping a local farmer bale hay. The hay was stacked on a trailer and towed by tractor to the barn. I usually sat in front of the trailer on the way to the barn, but I suddenly felt like that wasn't a good place to be, so I moved to the back. As soon as I did, I heard a clang. The hitch had come loose from the tractor while heading down a steep hill. I climbed down the back and easily stepped off moments before the trailer flipped over into a ravine."
4."I got an absolutely gut-twisting nauseating feeling and waited a few seconds before driving through the green light. Two pickup trucks slammed into each other and would have crushed me on my motorcycle."
5."I used to live and work in the suburbs. One evening, I was driving home at dusk. I was 18–19 and had the house to myself. My brother was out of town, and my mom was with her parents. My job was about 10 miles from my house and maybe six turns on decently sized roads. I'm a fairly observant person, and it wouldn't be odd for the same car to be behind me for half of those turns, but this time, a car 'followed' me all the way to my residential street. I got a gut feeling I was being followed, so I passed my house and turned left. My house was one over from the corner of another residential street that was a quarter-mile loop with another small street that reconnected to the loop and then back to my street."
"This car followed me as I made a loop. I then turned right to restart the loop, and it followed me again. I turned down the small street this time and completed the loop again. It followed me one more time. As I was about to make the loop for the fourth time, they finally drove off.
I drove around another five minutes just to make sure they didn't circle back, as I had nowhere else to park except out front of my house, but I was creeped out the rest of the night.
I slept with my door locked and barricaded it with a big kitchen knife. I have no idea if or why they followed me. I don't know if it was a friend pranking me or if my brother put one of his friends up to it since it was the only time that ever happened, and it was quite coincidental that I was alone. I worked retail, and some of the employees did have records, so I just don't know."
6."So it wasn't my gut, but my friend's. I noticed that whenever she had a bad feeling, it almost always turned out to be correct. We were going to sneak out one night and ride in the back of a friend's truck like we did sometimes. She told me she had a bad feeling, and I immediately backed out, and so did she. The others didn't listen, and that night, the truck flipped with two of our friends in the back. They were both hospitalized for a couple of weeks; one shattered his arm so bad it never fully healed right, and one has full back scars from the road burn."
7."I worked at a bar and had a very friendly gentleman offer to buy me dinner after we had some banter about our favorite beer. I was flattered, and he was handsome, but something in me didn't feel that it sat right. Turns out he was a serial killer and killed a backpacker mere weeks later. Police interviewed me to learn more about what he had said. He had offered to take a few girls out before he killed her. She and I were the same age, height, and build. I still have nightmares and survivor's guilt."
8."My dead best friend 'visited' me in my dream, and I ran into her in a grocery store. I remember I was ecstatic to see her and blabbed, and she just simply responded, 'You're sick,' and I woke up. In a few days, I found out I had high-risk cervical lesions and needed surgery."
9."When I was pregnant, I got bit by a Lyme tick at 28 weeks. I noticed the bullseye and got on antibiotics. My OB-GYN brushed it off after that; no harm was done, according to her. When I went to the hospital at 35 weeks to register for delivery (standard procedure here), I mentioned the Lyme and that I took antibiotics. The next day, they called me and told me they wanted to induce at 37 weeks because Lyme can damage the placenta, and they would rather not risk it."
"I talked to my OB-GYN about it, and she basically laughed it off, telling me not to induce. My gut instinct told me to induce, so I went with the hospital's advice and had my son at 37 weeks.
He was tiny, and it was a tough few weeks getting him to eat and stuff because he was so small and tired. The hospital sent the placenta to pathology. It was severely damaged and wouldn't have held up much longer.
If I had listened to my OB-GYN, I would have probably lost my son. Needless to say, I switched my OB-GYN after that."
10."This is not mine, but it is chilling. About 15 years back, I worked with a guy who told me that in his younger days, he attended a local youth club. One night, the guy that ran it wanted the boys to go 'Shirts versus Skins' for a game of football or whatever. My workmate was to be on the 'Skins' team, but he refused to take his shirt off. One thing led to another, and a big drama ensued. He got kicked out of the club and sent home."
"His mom and dad weren't happy, so they started to scold him and asked why he'd made such a fuss. He said he wasn't comfortable taking his top off in front of the youth leader as 'there was just something about the guy.'
A few years later, the youth leader, Thomas Hamilton, brutally murdered 16 children and their teacher at Dunblane Primary School."
11."It was in college a couple of years ago that I had that 'trust my gut' feeling. One of my buddies had invited me to a house party off campus nearby. I didn't have a car at the time, so I rode my longboard there. I rode up, and the party looked awesome, with a whole lot of noise and music, but something just made me want to turn around and go home. Not 10 minutes later did I hear the gunshots. Someone had brought a gun to that house party and shot four people. Sadly, one died, and three were injured. My buddy had left just as I got there and had no idea what happened but was OK."
12."It wasn't my feeling, but my mom's a few weeks ago. She works and lives near me and was going home at lunch to meet a plumber. She offered to drive me to my house so I could let my dog out. I normally take the bus to work and then the bus home at lunch and back, so the plan was for her to drive me home so I could walk my dog for a bit longer, and then I'd take the bus back. But when we got to my house, she said she thought she had better just drive me back to work quickly (it's about 10 minutes) and then meet the plumber. On our way back, we saw ambulances and police cars going back towards my house. I pulled up the police scanner, and we realized there was a shooting at my bus stop at the time I would have been waiting for the bus back to work."
13."I felt sick one morning, borderline whether it was enough to take a sick day. I ended up calling in sick. My colleague, who always gave me a lift to work, was involved in a head-on crash with a truck that veered lanes. He survived with minor injuries, but the passenger seat was completely crumpled, seat to dashboard."
14."In the days of MySpace, a girl I knew through high school extracurriculars posted a vague warning about an active-duty sailor she met online who seemed normal but suddenly wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. I messaged her to ask if she was okay, and she told me his name, warning me not to engage with him if he tried to contact me. She then mentioned how she had been deleting some of her pics and profile details because she honestly thought he might try to show up where she worked or even at our shared after-school activity."
"Literally, the following week, I had shown up for said extracurricular and was in the process of setting up with a few other people. The girl was in the restroom down a long, dark, isolated hall far from the primary entryway.
Out of nowhere, a guy who looked high school-ish in the face and build (and could fit in with us only in that sense) but who I had never seen before showed up and began looking around as if he knew the place and knew what he was after. I was used to other kids around my age dropping by to visit us out of curiosity, but they would normally just stand around awkwardly until we approached.
The guy's level of focus struck me as extremely disconcerting, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I needed to tell the girl first and any nearby adult. Because I felt so weirded out, I already knew I didn't want to talk to him, so I looked at the sign-in sheet at the entryway. He was the creeper the girl told me about.
As soon as I knew he couldn't notice where I was headed, I booked it down the hall toward the women's restroom, where I found the girl and told her what I saw and how I knew it was him. She started crying uncontrollably, and I told her to lock the door and that I was going to tell the adults in charge as soon as I could find them.
I then found two of the adults and told them what I saw and knew of the situation: the guy in question was literally just in the other room, and the girl had already locked herself in the bathroom. I was only 15; I don't know how I stayed so calm. The adults kicked right into action, escorted the guy off the premises, and filed a police report."
15."I was driving a very remote road in rural Australia — no streetlights, dead straight, pitch black, and no other people for 100-plus kilometers. The song 'Can't Stop' by The Red Hot Chili Peppers was playing, and it repeated 'stop' three times halfway through the song. I thought, huh, weird for Bluetooth to mess around after it's been perfect for the last eight hours of driving."
"As I finished that thought, I had a feeling there was something more to it, so I slowed down. I must have got to about 60 kmh when a herd of donkeys wandered onto the road. Had I been going 120 kmh, I would have hit them and very likely been in quite a decent accident.
I was going just slow enough to navigate them and swerved onto the side of the road, which was just dirt. Any faster, the car would have skidded and likely rolled. There was no cellphone signal, and literally no one else around.
Every time I hear that song, particularly where it is repeated, I get a wicked shiver and can only think if I hadn't slowed down, it could have been a very poor outcome."
16."I thought my son's breathing was weird. He was four days old, and I couldn't even explain to his doctor what I thought was weird; I just knew it was. I took him to the pediatrician, and she did a basic look at him, watched him breathe, and said he was fine; I was just 'in anxious mommy mode.' Yeah, okay. The following day, I took him to the ER and told them the same thing: 'I don't know what it is, but his breathing is just weird,' and boom, his oxygen was 72. He ended up staying on supplemental oxygen at home for two months. I was crying to one of the nurses, and he told me, 'Mom instinct is real, and I've seen it save a lot of kids' lives.'"
17."My wife and I went Black Friday shopping in 2018 when she was nine months pregnant. When we walked into the mall, I told her I felt uneasy and that we needed to get in and out pretty quickly. She wanted to go to look at some running shoes at Foot Locker, and I told her I didn't feel that was good because it was upstairs, so we went to a store on the lower level instead. A fight broke out outside of Foot Locker that ended with one dead and a few wounded. We had just walked away from the escalator to another store on the lower level and were able to exit before being trampled by the ensuing chaos and were able to get home safely."
18."One evening, I had this sudden urge to study the Heimlich maneuver. I figured I'd seen it on TV but didn't understand the technique and how effective it truly was. A month later, I went to stay with my cousin and his new girlfriend in another city to see a concert. I woke up the next day from the concert hungover. My cousin was at work, and his girlfriend entered the room, panic on her face, grabbing her throat. I jumped out of bed, hopped behind my cousin's girlfriend, and started doing the maneuver. After a few pumps, out came an Advil. She had taken one of those massive gel tabs, and it got stuck. Anyway, I was hungover as heck, but having what I learned fresh in my memory definitely helped me in that situation."
19."I was 15 and was at the annual Royal Adelaide Show. I'll preface by saying I am a thrill seeker; I will go on any thrill ride, adventure, anything. My sister asked me to go on this particular ride with her, and something in me told me no. She pleaded with me for so long, and I wouldn't go. I couldn't explain it, but I got a bad feeling and refused — no rhyme or reason why. My sister went on, and nothing happened. I felt kind of silly. A few days later, an 8-year-old girl was flung from this ride and died."
20."I was helping my friend with her move to a new apartment with her fiancé. We worked together, and at the time, she came into my office asking me to go with them to this furniture store, so I said yes. Right before we were leaving, I had this really bad gut feeling. I didn't know what it was, but I was exhausted, so I chalked it up to just that. About an hour later, I was in my living room, on my phone, windows all open (as the electricity was cut off, it's a normal thing in our country), and a HUGE explosion ripped through the city."
"I flew off my couch, hit my face on the granite table top, and chipped my tooth. I was disoriented for a few minutes when another explosion happened. I looked outside the window; every single window in every building in my vicinity was shattered to a million pieces, and I started looking for signs of what had happened.
I saw a HUGE cloud from the site of the explosion, and I knew my friend and her fiancé were nearby. The lines were down, people were in a panic, and there were police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks everywhere. They both got badly injured, but thankfully, they made it. Had I gone with them, I probably could've gotten injured, too, or died.
Thank God I was so exhausted that day, and thank God for the electricity being out and me having opened the windows; otherwise, glass from the window (which surprisingly didn't break) could've killed me."
21."I noticed pain in my lower back one morning and thought I slept on it wrong or something. Throughout the day, it continued and started to feel like when you get kicked in the groin. I thought to myself, it's probably cancer. I did a self-check and didn't think I noticed anything. I had my girlfriend do the same, and she wasn't sure. I called a urology office on my gut feeling and got the last appointment before Christmas break. It was cancer, but it was super early. I got an orchiectomy a few days later, then some mild chemo a few months later, and have been just fine ever since."
Have you ever had a scary "trust your gut" moment? Let us know about it in the comments or fill out this anonymous form.
